Stories for March 19, 2018

This week in the Classic FM Chart, 'The Glorious Garden' has managed to hold onto its No. 1 spot from last week - and Murray Perahia jumps up 20 places with his Beethoven Piano Sonatas!
The Classic FM Chart sees Alan Titchmarsh and Debbie Wiseman holding the No. 1 spot, with their brand-new album of original poetry and symphonic music. And it's good news for Andre Rieu with his album Amore, which stays strong at No. 2. The only change in this week's top five sees Einaudi's Islands and Sheku Kanneh-Mason's Inspiration switching places at No. 3 and No. 4 respectively. At No. 6, Murray Perahia has leapt up a huge 20 places with his album of Beethoven Piano Sonatas, while Sing Me Home by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble has also leapt up seven places from No. 14 to No. 7.
There are only two new entries this week: Language of the Heart by the Santiago Quartet at No. 9, and The Complete Recitals on Warner Classics by Christa Ludwig at No. 12. However, the bottom end of the chart sees a number of re-entries, including Ramin Djawadi's soundtrack to Game of Thrones Season 7, Karl Jenkins' The Armed Man, and two albums from Ludovico Einaudi.

On WCRB's CD of the Week, the soloists from the Montreal Symphony call on their virtuosity to bring out the light-heartedness in Beethoven and Richard Strauss.
Symphony orchestras are miraculous for what they can do as one complex entity. They possess a special chemistry that tunes their musicians directly into one another. And smaller miracles tend to crop up, too. Groups of orchestral players get real joy from stepping out of the bigger entity and finding camaraderie and spontaneity in chamber ensembles. Here in Boston, we've got the Boston Symphony Chamber Players and the Boston Cello Quartet. Now, in Montreal, the Soloists of the Montreal Symphony have begun a new series of recordings, and WCRB has chosen their first as our CD of the Week.
READ THE FULL WCRB: Boston ARTICLE

Johnny Cash built his mythic self to fit his actual voice, behaving as if it had arrived from somewhere else, as if the voice (like a flame) had traveled a great distance to get here. This was correct. As the story goes, Cash's voice presented itself to him late in his adolescence. It just showed up one day, unannounced, there to be misunderstood and wasted, like any other blessing. His mother was a simple woman but she referred to his voice as The Gift.
Its snarl, however full of bombast and sanctimony it might have been, also had a lazy cruelness to it, a sense of malignant power held in reserve. It was like an ink drawn from some prior place. Cash would always imply that his voice did not come from his own earthly person but from a spectral elsewhere, outside of him, coming on like the Holy Ghost, selecting him and then commencing its ravishing. There was no way he could have prepared himself for its arrival. He had been working when he received it, simply doing his chores, adding his blood and sweat to the family engine, keeping on keeping on. "When I was 17," he wrote, "I had been cutting wood all day with my father and I came in and I was singing a gospel song, ‘Everybody's gonna have a wonderful time up there, Glory hallelujah.'" PHOTO: Getty/Bloomsbury Publishing/Salon)
READ THE FULL Salon ARTICLE

The Cranberries have just announced they will be releasing a reissue of their Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can't We for its 25th anniversary as well as a brand new album. The band, as Rolling Stone reported, had already started working on the reissue before singer Dolores O'Riordan death in January, which caused the project to be put on hold. The surviving members of the group, however, have revealed they will get back to the project and complete their new album, on which O'Riordan recorded her vocals before her sudden death. The band said their hope is to release the new record in the beginning of 2019.
READ THE FULL mxdwn.com ARTICLE

The music (and film and tech and everything else) at South by Southwest almost always looks to the future. Emerging acts and novel sounds and panels try to make sense of a music industry turned inside-out.
So what a treat to wander into a club set from '70s rock experimentalist Todd Rundgren at the end of Thursday evening's slate of music at 1 a.m. There are usually a few legacy acts or established mainstream performers each year, but it's rare to catch a singer-songwriter who has been pushing the outer edges of rock since the '60s - and has a worthy new collaborative album to add to that legacy.
Rundgren had some chart hits in the U.S. ("Hello It's Me" and "I Saw The Light" among them), but today, he's more of a cult figure and deep inspiration for today's crop of psychedelic acts and electronic producers. His new LP "White Night" has collaborations with current electronic boundary-pushers like Trent Reznor and Robyn, and nods to his classic rock legacy with turns from Joe Walsh and Steely Dan's Donald Fagen.
There's always pleasure in discovering something brand new at SXSW, but there's just as much as rediscovering something older that turns out to still sound brand new. "You're playing checkers and I'm playing chess," he sang on "Let's Do This," from his newest LP. That's been true for 40 years and counting. PHOTO: Gordon Lamb
READ THE FULL Los Angeles Times ARTICLE

Internationally acclaimed jazz pianist Vijay Iyer is one of the few artists to play two different sets on the Rosies Stage at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival. Iyer brings out his sextet to play both nights of the Festival on March 23 and 24, presenting original compositions on both nights.
Speaking from New York, Iyer said it had not been a tough decision to travel so far to get to Cape Town. While it is difficult to organise and schedule a six-member band made up of people who also have their own careers, playing in South Africa is something he has wanted to do for a while. "My mother-in-law is from Durban so I have been hearing stories for 20 years now," said the Grammy-nominated composer/ bandleader.
READ THE FULL IOL ARTICLE

Throughout all of the changes the Star Wars galaxy has gone through, from different trilogies of films from different directors, to the different characters that have taken center stage, there has been one constant throughout it all: John Williams.
The legendary composer has been featured in every entry of the main saga, but Williams' score has yet to receive the recognition that it has for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Fans who purchase the movie have access to a score-only version, comparable to what writer and director Rian Johnson calls a "silent film" with Williams music as the only sounds. And now you can watch a teaser for that version in the clip above.
Johnson revealed this version of the movie during a live Q&A, saying it was one of his passion projects for the home video version. READ Comicbook.com
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Following her acclaimed album with the Staatskapelle Berlin and Daniel Barenboim, Tchaikovsky & Sibelius Violin Concertos, Lisa Batiashvili releases Visions of Prokofiev, a new album with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Daniel Hope returns to core repertoire with Journey to Mozart, an intimate exploration of Mozart's world comprising both works by the titular composer and pieces by his contemporaries Gluck, Haydn, Mysliveček and Salomon.

As part of Classical MPR's 50th anniversary we'll celebrate one of public radio's most popular programs - Saint Paul Sunday. Over the next few months, we'll share highlights from the popular program, hosted by Bill McLaughlin, every Tuesday night at 7 p.m. on Classical MPR. This week, SPS is sharing an episode from 1986 featuring an 18-year old Joshua Bell. He is joined by his teacher, the legendary violinist Josef Gingold, and pianist Angela Cheng, to share music by Wieniawski, de Sarasate, Kreisler and more.

Crossover Media Projects with Joshua Bell

Sony Classical announces the release of Joshua Bell – The Classical Collection, a 14-CD set of albums of classical repertoire that the internationally acclaimed, Grammy® Award winning violinist has recorded for the label over the past twenty years. The collection is available worldwide on August 18th, 2017. Displaying the unique breadth, versatility and breathtaking virtuosity, beguiling sensitivity and sheer tonal beauty that has made Bell an icon for audiences of all ages and musical tastes throughout the world, this new collection showcases Joshua Bell in cornerstones of the violin concerto repertoire, chamber music and concert pieces.

Violinist Joshua Bell is one of the most acclaimed classical musicians of today - renowned for his expressive, elegant, intelligent playing and his deep commitment to bringing the classical tradition to wider audiences. Over the past three decades he has recorded more than 40 albums including most of the great violin repertoire. Now, Sony Classical is excited to announce that Bell has for the first time recorded the masterpieces of J.S. Bachwith the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. In his third season now as their music director, Bell performs Bach's sublime Violin Concertos No. 1 and No. 2, along with a never-done-before 'violin and orchestra' arrangement of the famous Chaconne from the Partita No. 2 (adapted from Mendelssohn's piano accompaniment), the Gavotte en Rondeau from Partita No. 3 for solo violin (using Schumann's accompaniment), and the universally beloved 'Air on the G string'.

With Musical Gifts from Joshua Bell and Friends, world-renowned violinist Joshua Bell recreates his family's tradition of having friends come to his home during the holidays and joining in on songs that celebrate the warmth, beauty and magic of the season. Following the concept of his critically acclaimed album, At Home with Friends, Bell collaborates with a variety of special guests including Gloria Estefan, Alison Krauss, Kristin Chenoweth, trumpeter Chris Botti, jazz greats Chick Corea and Branford Marsalis, opera stars Plácido Domingo and Renée Fleming, Michael Feinstein, Frankie Moreno, a cappella group Straight No Chaser, and classical artists Steven Isserlis and acclaimed classical comedy duo Igudesman-Joo. Co-produced by Steven Epstein and David Lai, Musical Gifts is available from Sony Masterworks.

Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell, who has enchanted audiences for two decades with his breathtaking playing and tone of rare opulence, has recorded Antonio Vivaldi's concertos The Four Seasons. Widely considered as one of the premier violinist of his generation, Bell is joined on this studio release by the celebrated musicians of the Academy of St.Martin in the Fields, who toured the work with him prior to the recording sessions.

Few new recordings of such canonical works as Beethoven symphonies can claim status as true events these days, but Joshua Bell's first recording as Music Director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields is just that. Bell leads the London orchestra in Beethoven's Symphonies No. 4 and No. 7 – from the violin. He bothconducts and plays from the concertmaster chair, sometimes contributing to the fabric of sound with his instrument; other times lifting his bow to exhort and emphasize. On February 12 2013, Sony Classical releases the Beethoven recording, which follows Bell and the Academy's lauded version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons from 2008. Classics Today gave that album high praise, pointing how it "scorches and sizzles. . . Bell and his first-rate partners make beautiful music out of Vivaldi's conceptions."

Grammy winning violinist Joshua Bell has chosen enduring melodies from the world of opera and song, on his latest Sony Classical recording: Voice of the Violin. Following up on his Chart topping Romance of the Violin, here, accompanied by the Orchestra of St. Luke's, "Voice of the Violin" features Opera's hottest new star, soprano Anna Netrebko.

On Joshua Bell's new album, At Home With Friends, the Grammy Award-winning violinist fulfills a life-long career dream of recording a CD of instrumental and vocal duets with a colorful roster of musicians including Sting, Kristin Chenoweth, Josh Groban, Regina Spektor, Chris Botti, Anoushka Shankar, Marvin Hamlisch, and Tiempo Libre, among others. The concept was inspired by Bell's long-time practice of holding 'musical soires at his New York residence eclectic gatherings of musicians, actors, comics, literary figures and others who convene for the sheer joy of sharing their art in an informal setting.